They’re back! Eeek Mice #4

 

I jumped up and scurried into the kitchen to email Gus, who owns my apartment, to tell him that covering the mouse holes with steel wool  did not work.  That was one big mouse!

 

The next morning, there was a brown loafer right where I’d seen the scurrying brown furry thing.

 

I wondered if I were losing it–you get jumpy when critters scuttle around. 

 

 Gus emailed me back to ask for the number of the city health inspector to find out who’s responsible for bringing in an exterminator  (he is ).  I said let’s give it a few days to make sure I saw what I thought I saw. it was my

 

The next day,  while I was eating breakfast, something resembling a huge hairy cockroach (or was it a shadow?) scooted from behind the table to the radiator I thought we’d blocked off .  That night,   a new mouse (not Arthur or Jack or a huge hairy cockroach) rushed out from under the stove.  I screeched. He ran  across the kitchen and disappeared under the refrigerator.

 

I  emailed Gus: “Eeek”. 

 

Gus told me the health inspector  told him he had pay for  the exterminator if the building doesn’t take care of it but “don’t let them use poison” unless the Doug, the building manager, agrees. Doug  has a “thing” about using poison.  “I don’t want   dead mice in the walls stinking everything up,” he told me, the first time I complained. The third time, he had the super put a pile of gooey traps outside my door.

Gus, I just ran into Doug. Told him the mice are back. He said he’d send in an exterminator. He uses one called Cambridge Chemical or something like that.  Definitely has “chemical” in the title.  Anita 

 

 Mind you, this has been going on since December, with weeping baby mice in the gooey traps, and mommy and daddy mice following them to the grave. Er, garbage can.  

 

 For other reasons, ( really, I’m  not  a whiner but huge clouds of white dust are emanating  from  the construction site across the narrow driveway, next door)  I called the Cambridge Health Department…asking them not to use my name so I don’t piss off my building manager, who’s also in charge next door, before my mouse problem gets resolved.    

 

The inspector wasn’t much  interested in the construction issue (too simple: they just have to hose it down)  but the mice were a different story. Where but in the Peoples’ Republic of Cambridge would an inspector use the term “mouse turds,” in trying to ascertain how serious a situation I was in?

  I told him, “gross, no turds;   I’m seeing real mice. Three in gooey traps. I’ve named the others Art and Jack, after my ex-boyfriends.”  The inspector asked how my current boyfriend feels about my naming mice after my ex’s.  “I don’t exactly have a boyfriend,” I said.   He advised  me  whom to call about the dust clouds and  the mice,   promised to call me again and offered to come by to  check out the situation.

 

 I left messages for a couple of exterminators.   At 6:30 pm,  one called back to say she’d be away for a few days but could recommend someone else if this were an emergency.   I hesitated, then decided the situation had been going on for so long that I could last for another few days.  “Thanks,” I said. “It  isn’t.”

 

Big mistake.

To be continued.

—Anita M. Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish HarriscomBlog and Ithaca Diaries Blog.